‘Just cut its horns off and wipe its ass’ is no longer in my lexicon

Photo swiped from The Guardian's holiday snap competition winners gallery - ta very much. My entry was better by the way.

What a week. And it not even over yet. But only one more day before I can get back into my jeans, pack a bag and sink into a seat on the bus that will carry me north to River John and Margaret and Ian, who will hopefully help me make sense of all of this.

Fuelling up for the day

I got up early on Monday and put on a dress and some slap, which was very strange, and ate breakfast which I never used to do but which I’ve done every day since I came to Canada, to the utter amazement of my stomach which has responded by demanding outrageous amounts of food almost immediately again, or by ten am at the latest. So now, I have juice and cereal and a bagel and coffee and some eggs for breakfast, and then I bring another big bagel and some biccies to work in a bag, along with my sangidges and my fruit and my trail mix. I am ashamed to admit that on Tuesday morning the bag was empty by 11.20am. And by empty, I mean the inside of the biccie bag had been fingernail scraped to get at the last of the chocolate chips.

Well, it is a long walk, up two steep hills. And I am relieved to report that I still actually take the food out of the bag with my hands, despite my rapacious stomach begging me to dive nose first into it. All of this, I seem to recall, was why I stopped having breakfast in the first place, it being too expensive to have an energetic metabolism in Ireland. However, it’s okay here, because food is cheap, and fair trade restaurants abound, that do things like ‘not charge you for the coffee if you buy any food item’ or at the very least, ‘not rip you off utterly like those shysters in Dublin’. And I can feed myself out of the supermarket really well for about $120 a week, which is about €80.

‘Just cut its horns off and wipe its ass’ is no longer in my lexicon

One of the interesting things that has happened is that I have pretty much stopped eating meat, for a number of reasons. I am living in the Maritimes, so there is a lot of cheap fish. I have learned how to cook tofu. If not to enjoy it yet. Not ever, I reckon, although Yoichi’s miso soup is as close as I’ve ever gotten to culinary heaven (apart from those goldleaf-coated truffles we had that one time in Thorntons.)

You’d know I’d cut down on the cigarettes, wouldn’t you… totally obsessed with food….

But mostly I’ve stopped eating meat because I can’t figure out where it comes from. And the organic stuff is mad money. I didn’t think that it would be a big deal, but when you come from a country where you probably passed the cow in your car at some point during its life, and the supermarket has a photo of the farmer in the meat section along with his address, it is not very appealing to think your steak came from some BSE infested factory-farm in Manitoba, or worse, Montana.

Even worse, the tofu place was located next to a chicken farm. Let’s just say, if it’s not free-range fowl, I’m not eating it. Ever.

Sobey's v Superstore

There’s no need anyway. Now that Dr. Atkins has been discredited and carbohydrates are back in, there are acres and acres of nice food to be had for a pittance in Sobey’s, or Atlantic Superstore, which are the two supermarket chains here. Atlantic Superstore is better, apparently. I had this confirmed for me at a dinner party last night, when one of the guests ‘fessed that she worked for Sobey’s and shopped in Superstore. There’s also Co-op, which is a community co-operative shopping concept they have here in Atlantic Canada, where you buy shares in the shop and get discounted food. But they don’t have one in Halifax. Well, they have the anarchist one on Agricola that made me so mad I put the bottles on the roof of the car last week, but I’m not joining that one, if they can’t even get their egg order right.

As I don’t spend money on anything except food (and books - I always think of that great quote from Erasmus, I think, that says 'when I have a little money I buy some books and if I have any left I get some food' at times like these) at the moment, going to the supermarket is A BIG DEAL. Back when, I whizzed around and bought more or less the same thing every week and then headed over to the wine section to see what was on offer. Now I have to check the price of everything and look out for bargains and try new things and it takes ages. And then I have to get a treat because all scrimping and no chocolate biscuits makes me practically suicidal, so I am methodically working my way through the cookies’ section. So far, the President’s Choice luxury dark chocolate double chip brand is a nose ahead. But I found apple fig rolls recently, which intrigued me. They’re not very nice though, and when I offered them to the Labradorians in Wentworth, they laughed and said they were really ‘old’ biscuits. Like Marietta, I suppose.

But how do they get the apples into the fig rolls?

Sorry.

I am the practically the only one who brings in shopping bags and packs them myself. The checkout women all think I’m great. They always mention it and talk about how great Ireland is that they’ve taxed the bags. They’re like the staff in Marks and Spencers – mostly middle-aged women and a few older men. And they have to stand for their whole shift – it’s appalling.

Anyway, how did we get onto workers’ rights in the Canadian retail sector? An interesting vignette into how my mind works, right there for you all. Nosebag – plastic bag – evil corporate bastards. Obvious really.

‘Canadian fantastic healthcare system a complete myth’ shocker

Work, Queenie, tell them about work!

Oh yeah, work. Well, I went into Just Us! for coffee on the way into work on my first day. And there was this reasonably cute guy in there and he was smiling at me, so I smiled back at him, and then he said “So you decided to rejoin the workforce again”, and I was completely shocked – how did he know? Was I walking funny? Was my makeup on all wrong? Was my dress on backwards? What, what? And then I realised it was MY NEW BOSS I was talking to.

Muppet…I am going to have to get my eyes lasered or just start wearing my glasses all the time.

Ooooooh, a thought occurs to me, I wonder does my Medicare cover it? Apparently, I have the hard-core Medicare that only government employees get, that kicks in immediately and covers shiatsu massage and prescription sunglasses and teeth-whitening treatments and crap like that. For seven dollars a week or something like that. Jammy, eh! Canadian government employees look after themselves better than Irish ones. And that’s saying something.

By the way, amusingly, the key problems in the Canadian healthcare system are: - waiting lists, step-down beds for elderly patients, lack of primary care in rural areas, inability to get consultants to work in local hospitals, and the growing emergence of a two-tier care system.

Although to give them their due, they don’t seem to have psychotic obstetricians what take women’s wombs out for personal reasons, or consultants taking swipes at each other and calling each other the N word.

Work!!!!!!!!

Ahem, this is all work-related, really.

Anyways, I got escorted into the building by my new boss, who’s only a couple of years older than me. And very nice. He’s recently had issue, so that’s what he talks about mostly. So he’s normal anyway. And he takes Fridays off to look after said issue, which is always nice to see in a bloke with a high-powered job.

So I said to him, jokingly, what’s all this about a hurricane* alert? And he said, it’s quite possible there will be one.

(* Some of you will know what I mean by hurricane, some of you won’t. Sorry about that, fling us an email if you’re confused.)

So that’s great, first day on the job and I’m thinking I might have to weather a hurricane, and depending on how destructive it is, I might be hurtling across country with an empty wallet and a sense of déjà vu. But you know, that’s okay, because that’s what this year is about. Learning new ways of doing things. Except I have a lot of experience with hurricanes.

Anyways, I’ll continue before I completely confuse my two readers who are not personal friends.

An hour passes...

Well, I just spent an hour on the phone to New Jersey Girl, so I’m pooped and the tale of my first week in work will have to wait until another day, as I’m going to bed now.

I apologise for the state of this post. I am very tired.